


we've come so far

by nevernevergirl



Series: the war is over and we are beginning [1]
Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: Coda, F/M, Found Family, Gen, Making Out, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23851987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevernevergirl/pseuds/nevernevergirl
Summary: Chase is dead in her arms. He is also alive and breathing and bounding down the stairs.After they win, after their parents are gone, Gert learns to move forward. 3x10 missing scene fic.
Relationships: Chase Stein/Gertrude Yorkes
Series: the war is over and we are beginning [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685389
Comments: 7
Kudos: 70





	we've come so far

**Author's Note:**

> i've basically had bits and pieces of this sitting in my drafts since december, and finally managed to clean it up into something I like! Takes place around the end of the series finale and is 99% just because I wanted to think about Gert grappling with Chase fake-dying tbh.

Chase is dead in her arms. 

(He is also alive and breathing and bounding down the stairs.)

She’s rubbing the pads of her fingers in soft, soothing circles behind his ear and trying not to think about how it doesn’t matter because nothing can soothe him if he’s dead. 

(He’s standing above her, beautiful and confused and alive.)

He’s gone, vanished. 

(He’s right beside her.)

Someone says something about time travel that she can barely hear over the pounding of her own heart. 

She thinks _Pirates of Penance,_ and _we’ve all had to live in a world without Gert Yorkes_ and _we win because of you_ —and yeah, okay, when she pushes past the fog in her brain, time travel makes as much sense as anything else. 

Above her (and actually, really there), Chase says her name, softly and with concern. Then, he’s crouching next to her, and she realizes she’s still staring at her blood-stained lap. Also, she’s still sort of sobbing instead of breathing properly. 

She turns, grabbing at his shirt and curling her fists so hard into the fabric she’s sort of surprised she isn’t ripping it. 

“Chase,” she says, and she thinks it still comes out like a sob, so she tries again. “Chase.”

“Hey,” he says, smiling at her softly. “Yeah, it’s me. I don’t know who that was, but it’s me. I’m fine.”

She shakes her head, because she’s pretty sure in some timeline, some version of reality, that’s not true. 

“I love you,” she says, and it’s quiet, and her voice is shaking, but she says it. “I love you,” she says again, pressing her forehead against his chest. 

He’s stiff against her for a moment (but not the dead kind of stiff, because he’s still _alive_ and _warm_ and _here_ ), and then his arms come around her, rubbing soft circles on her back.

“Gert,” he ducks his head, his lips brushing her temple as he lowers his voice, “Gert, me too, you know that, but are you sure you want to do this here?”

She shifts, not enough to move away from him, but just enough to notice their friends around them, their parents crowded just behind. There’s a lot of confused babbling and unanswerable questions being thrown around, so they’re only sort of paying attention to Gert, on the floor still, and Chase, half-hunched over next to her, but they’re there. 

Oh.

He’s absolutely right. She absolutely does _not_ want to be doing this here, in front of everyone. She’s been not telling Chase she loves him for weeks now, maybe longer. She wanted to be careful and slow about it. She’d decided earlier, when she’d decided that she wanted to tell him at all, that she wanted to do it with intention. She wanted to do it when she could find a moment that wasn’t filled with life-or-death and fear. They’d done so much out of impulse and urgency, she’d just wanted that one thing. 

And instead, it’s been ripped from her because she’s desperate and scared, just like everything else she’s done in the past year. It’s no less true, but it’s not how she wanted to do it. And at some moment, probably soon, she’ll be angry and sad about that.

But she saw him die before she could say it, and that’s going to stick with her a lot longer.

She shakes her head against him, not letting go, not pulling away.

“Not really,” she mumbles. “But it’s true.”

His breathing is shaky but _there_ as he rakes his fingers through her hair. 

“Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay.”

Victor Stein hasn’t taken his hand off of Chase’s arm in fifteen minutes.

It had taken a moment for everyone’s parents to get their bearings in the aftermath of…whatever had happened. But after a beat, they’d swooped in, swarming them, pulling them apart like they still belonged to five separate families.

She’s sitting on the stairs next to Molly while their parents insist on running through a concussion checklist; she’s going to have some gnarly bruises for sure, but something tugs at her—the ghost of an almost-memory reminding her it could have been, should have been much worse. 

VIctor Stein is still smiling at Chase and holding his arm and speaking to him in hushed tones. It’s too loud in here, with all the parents fussing and her friends all protesting and brushing them off, but she can make out _better_ and _promise_.

Gert feels like she’s going to buzz right out of her skin.

“Check Chase too,” she blurts out, and Stacey pulls back, startled. Gert realizes that’s probably the first thing she’s said directly to her mother all night; she’s too tired to care about or unpack that right now, though.

Chase turns at the sound of her voice, blinking. Her breath catches; she used to think it was so stupid that he could get that kind of response out of her, but after what she saw tonight, she’s okay with being stupid about him. She’ll be stupid about him forever if forever gives her the chance.

“I’m okay,” he says, slowly. “Really, Gert, that wasn’t—”

“You, I know, you keep saying,” she says, shaking her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. You said something about getting knocked out? By….yourself?”

Victor frowns, and places a hand on Chase’s face, turning him to get a look. Gert inhales, sharply.

“Mom,” she says, and she tries not to _feel_ anything at the way Stacey’s face lights up at the word. “You should check him out, right? If he got hit hard enough to pass out for the whole battle?”

Stacey nods, and says something about CTE Gert’s too relieved to pay attention to while she stands, and then she’s tugging Chase away from his dad and over to the stairs.

“It _was_ a pretty good punch,” Chase says, settling next to Gert, thigh to thigh. He holds up his arm, flexing. “Good to know this doesn’t change.”

“Ugh. Gross,” Gert says, but she sort of feels like she might start crying again, and she thinks maybe it sounds more like _I’m so glad you’re here_.

Somewhere around 3 a.m., Dale comes out of Molly’s room with his arms full of the bedding Gert had deemed potentially too moldy for any of them to use when they’d first moved.

“Um,” she says, nudging Chase, who frowns in confusion.

Stacey tucks a sheet into the cushions of the ratty chaise lounge. Dale tosses a moldy throw pillow each at Victor and Tina; the identical faces of disgust would be super funny, in any other context. Leslie turns in the direction of the Treehouse.

Gert moves toward Molly, with Chase just a step behind her. Within moments, Alex, Karolina, and Nico are right there with them. It’s like what Nico had said earlier, Gert thinks. Their circle.

“Are they...spending the night?” Molly asks, making a face.

“No way,” Alex says, crossing his arms.

“Nico,” Karolina says.

Nico sighs, holding the staff out in front of. She slams the end on the floor once, twice, three times. All parental eyes turn to her.

“Out,” she says, loudly, clearly. 

Their parents disappear. A throw pillow gently falls to the floor.

Chase blinks. “Holy—”

“Shit,” Gert says, in agreement. “Did you just—”

“Where did they go?” Molly asks.

“Home,” Karolina says, firmly. “Right, Nico?”

“Right,” she says, slumping over the staff a little. Gert kind of wants to hug her. “Or, like. Brentwood. In general. I don’t know, man, I’m tired.”

“Hey, good enough for me,” Alex says, shrugging. 

“Wait, so you just had _out_ as a spell?” Chase asks. “We literally had the LAPD breaking into the Hostel, and you could have just said _out_?”

“They were only actually _in_ the hostel for part of that,” Molly says, helpfully. 

“Okay, next time you can try doing magic with an evil hell sorceress possessing you,” Nico says, rolling her eyes.

“Wait, back up, when was the LAPD here?” Gert asks.

“When you were poisoned,” Karolina says, shrugging. “I thought we told you. We ran into them in the Dark Dimension, remember?”

“I remember you telling me Livvie got kidnapped, but I’m pretty sure you left out the hostile takeover.”

“The _Hostel_ takeover,” Molly says, grinning.

“Nice,” Chase says. They high-five over Gert’s head; Gert fights back a smile as she rolls her eyes. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Alex says. His voice is quiet, and he’s not looking directly at any of them. “What matters is our parents are gone, and this is over. I just don’t really get _how_ it’s over.”

They’re all silent for a moment. Karolina wraps her arms around Nico’s waist, and Nico leans back against her. Molly grabs Gert’s hand, and Chase wraps an arm around Gert’s shoulders. 

“We can debrief in the morning. Or, like. Afternoon. After sleep,” Nico says. She shifts a little, pulling back from Karolina just long enough to reach into her back pocket. She holds up a card. “Swiped this from my mom earlier. We can probably make it to brunch before she knows it’s missing.”

Molly turns to Gert, grinning. “Can I get a mimosa this time? For saving the world?”

Gert laughs, the kind of laugh that bursts loud and sharp from her stomach, unexpected.

“Nice try.”

Chase follows her to her room, after. It’s still, technically, her room; they didn’t have time to work through the logistics of all this before saving the world. But he’s holding her hand when they all decided to go to bed, and Gert doesn’t want to let go, so he follows her to her room.

And now they’re _in_ her room. Just standing there. In her room.

“I’m going to take this off,” Gert says, abruptly, gesturing at her clothes.

“Um,” Chase says. He looks and sounds lost.

“You bled all over it,” she says, reasonably. 

“That wasn’t me,” he says, confusion giving way to the same indignant tone he’d used the past ten times he’s had to say that, to her, to their friends, to their parents.

“No,” she agrees, because she’s touched him enough to prove he’s solid and real and not an evil hell witch delusion. “But it was future you, or alternate you, or whatever. So it’s technically your blood, it’s just also still in you.”

“Is my blood creating a paradox?”

She laughs. She feels borderline hysterical. She can feel the tears welling up again, though they’re more relief and exhaustion than trauma-induced now. 

“I don’t really know what that means,” she says, shaking her head. “I’m just. I’m going to take my clothes off now, Chase.”

He nods. “Okay. Um. I can, uh. Go? Away?”

His voice leaps half an octave on the last word.

She shakes her head and tries to be as brave as she felt two hours ago, when she thought they were going to die together.

“No,” she says, and his eyes widen. “Also, um. You should take yours off too. If you want.”

“Um.”

“Chase.” 

“Yeah,” he breathes more than speaks. “Yeah. I want.”

She lets her jacket fall to the floor, yanking off the sweater vest next and slipping out of her boots and socks and pants. She could stop. That’s where most of the blood is. When she looks up, Chase is barefoot, and has shrugged off his top shirt. He has the hem of his t-shirt in hand, and he’s biting his lip.

She steps closer, and closer. The hostel is quiet enough that all she can hear is his breathing. Her heart pounds. He’s breathing, and her heart is beating, and she’s not sure she’s ever felt so alive. She places his hand over his, and tugs up, gently, until he’s pulling his shirt up and over his head.

She swallows hard.

He reaches out, watching her carefully until she nods. He undoes the buttons on her shirt slowly, like he’s not sure this is really happening, like he’s trying to commit it to memory, and she understands. Occasionally, his fingertips slip against her skin. She smiles as she slips the shirt off her shoulders. She’s so fucking happy where she was the saddest she’s ever been just hours ago. Chase is stripping down to his underwear now, and they are so alive. 

“Okay,” she says, softly. “Maybe just. Maybe just this much for now?”

It’s much less than they’ve done before, of course, and she wants to do more, also of course, but she thinks she needs a line to not cross right this second, or her heart might actually beat out of her chest. 

He nods, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear.

“What now?” he asks.

She takes a deep breath and walks over to the bed, sitting against the pillows and waving him over. He climbs on from the opposite end, walking on his knees to settle between her legs. She places a hand on his chest, and he lays his against her rib cage, thumb stroking absently up and down.

The first time they’d done this had been a whirlwind; so fast. But now, he leans forward in slow-motion.

The world stops for a moment.

And then she pulls away. 

“Wait,” she says. Chase pulls back too, confused, but giving her space.

“What?” he asks, brow furrowed. “Did I do something?”

“No, no,” she says, shaking her head. She grabs for his hands, covering them with her own as she takes a deep breath. “I need to tell you something.”

He nods, still frowning. “Yeah, okay. Anything.”

She slides her fingers through his, locking them together. She bites her lip.

“I think I died,” she says, quietly. “If that was really time travel, I think wherever you came from, I died tonight.”

He stares at her for a moment, and she can’t breathe. 

“Whenever,” he says, and she frowns. “ _When_ ever I came from, not _where_ ever. If it’s time travel.”

“ _Chase_.”

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, okay. That’s kind of what I thought.”

“Wait, seriously?”

“Nobody mentioned seeing you.” He shifts, rolling off of her and flopping onto the bed. “Obviously some bad shit happened if we came back to fix it.”

She shifts onto her side, watching him carefully, and she bites her lip. 

“He said he knew what it was like to live without me, and then he told me I’d die if I went back out there,” she says.

Chase stares up at the water stain on the ceiling. Gert feels like she’s holding her breath underwater.

“You went back out anyway.”

She exhales.

“Yeah,” she says, quietly. She takes his hand again and plays with his fingers, idly. “You were out there. You were all out there. It was worth the risk, just as much as whatever you guys did for me. We’re a family.”

She’s said the words before, seven months and a lifetime ago, when she thought they’d been through hell and back. Before _literal_ hell. Before she really knew what that meant. She felt it then, and she knows it now.

He turns onto his side, lacing his fingers with hers.

“I love you,” he says, steadily. Like it’s a matter of fact.

“I love you, too,” she says, because it is.

If being near him had stopped the world before, the smile he gives her now tilts it on its axis. She feels dizzy.

“This,” she whispers, gesturing between them. “This feels really big.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No,” she shakes her head. “Definitely not.”

She tugs him closer, and she leans in for a kiss. It’s slow and gentle at first, and she parts her lips slowly to let him in. He shifts, leaning over her; he’s blanketing her, and she feels warm and safe. She tilts her head back, and he kisses her jaw, her neck. When his hands trace along her skin, she feels like she’s dreaming, and also, somehow, like she’s more awake than she’s ever been. 

“Stay here tonight,” she murmurs, between kisses. Stay here forever, she thinks. 

When he says yes, it’s against her lips, and it’s a promise. 

They go to brunch. They wait in line for 45 minutes, and the boys and Nico complain the whole fucking time. Nobody gets possessed by a cell phone. The only person who flirts with Gert is Chase, and she flirts right back while Molly calls them gross.

Nico dumps half a canister of sugar into her black coffee, and Alex goes through, like, four pieces of avocado toast in ten minutes. Karolina and Molly are playing hangman on a paper napkin with the crayons Karolina inexplicably had in her bag. Gert orders vegan sausage but gets eggs and steals a piece of real bacon off of Chase’s plate while he’s too busy shoving gluten-free waffles in his mouth to notice. 

They don’t debrief. They don’t talk about time travel, or the Dark Dimension, or their parents. They laugh a shit ton. They throw straw wrappers at each other. 

It’s so fucking normal.

It’s probably not going to be like that forever, Gert knows. She wants normal. She wants to go to college, she wants to go on dates with Chase, she wants brunch and movie nights and study sessions at coffee shops. She doesn’t know if she believes in a world where they get to just move on. 

But that’s okay. She has the boy she loves, and the bravest little sister on the planet, and best friends she’d do anything for. She almost didn’t get to keep that. They almost didn’t get to keep her. 

Any amount of this? That’s worth it. 


End file.
